It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience).

It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing.

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience).

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively.

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.

However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others.

One tends to write beyond what's needed.

To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity.

Not in the mornings, I'm always so tired in the morning.

On Quora, you're not answering questions because you want to get points or because you have nothing else to do.

I am infinitely grateful to the life which privileged me.

A lot of the music I write is about love. Sometimes I won't understand how I am feeling until I write a song about it.

Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster's own personal example.

We can ask ourselves why we invent God, and then, ten minutes later, we invent Satan - why? Because we need him; there's something fascinating about the other side of the coin.

When you scratch the surface, every one of us has something that we deeply want to contribute to the world. All we have to do is step up and do it.

I've been a biker, I've been a convict, I've been a husband, father, and son.

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

Lightning doesnt strike through a cave.

There was endometrial tissue outside of where it belonged, and the cancer developed from that.

Knowing the rules and remembering the rules are two completely different things.

This is the very ecstasy of love whose violent property ordoes itself and leads the will to desperate undertakings.

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

I think the best president - because he changed the whole mood of the country, the whole economy of the country, and stood up to Communism... that was continuing its causes around the world, and backed them off and caused them to collapse - and that was Ronald Reagan.

I feel like I've been marinated in Australian theatre.

Instead of looking at individual buildings, it makes more metaphorical sense to think of New York as one enormous chunk of masonry that has been cut up and carved away. It says, 'This is the ultimate polis, through which humans move like nematodes.'

Whatever you can imagine is waiting for you, fully created in the invisible, and the way to make it visible is to harness the force of love by imagining and feeling what you love.

Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.

Every President that went to China, I would meet them and have dinner and talk about the past and the future. That was in the '70s.

We've always known we'd eventually be called upon to open our shirts and save the day, and the superhero was a crude, hopeful attempt to talk about how we all might feel on that day of great power, and great responsibility.

I always envisioned myself being a rapper and being in the game and having success, but you never know what it feels like or how you're going to be when you're there.

Sketching in general - anywhere, not just in Gitmo, but in life, in the world - is a profoundly disruptive act. Because you're creating something when you're kind of expected to consume or sit passively. I've always sketched things as a way to get into them, whether it was a fancy nightclub or, you know, to have kids think I was cool, whatever.

I love when we are talking on the phone and being able to tell when you're smiling, it makes me smile. And when I know your smiling because of me, it makes my whole world brighter.